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But now the world’s most powerful drug trafficker is taking one what is arguably the world’s most feared organization, ISIS.

Chapo’s anger toward the radical jihadist group does not stem from some sense of altruism for the victims of the recent attacks in Paris or San Bernardino, but instead from concerns about his bottom line after ISIS destroyed several of his Sinaloa Cartel’s drug shipments moving through the Middle East.

“You [ISIS] are not soldiers,” Guzmán purportedly wrote. “You are nothing but lowly p**. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”

Guzmán added: “My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a whore that tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them. It looks like it’s on.”

The Sinaloa Cartel is considered the world’s largest drug trafficking organization, with operations running throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia. In the Middle East, the cartel has become a major provider of cocaine, ecstasy and other so-called party drugs to oil-rich princes and businessmen throughout the region.

Islamic State fighters, however, abhor the use of drugs and have systemically been destroying any cartel shipments they get their hands on.

While the group is prolific on social media and in their video output, ISIS has so far not responded to the threats from Guzmán.

In his letter, Guzmán also hints that if he succeeds in destroying the terrorist group then he should be given immunity from prosecution. Guzmán made a highly-publicized escape earlier this year from a maximum security prison in Mexico, where he was awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges.

“It would be ironic that the group who ends up taking out ISIS is El Chapo’s drug cartel!” Guzmán reportedly wrote. “They seem up to the task and it could be worth giving immunity to this guy in exchange for him and his boys taking out ISIS once and for all!

Drug-related homicides in Mexico could conceivably hit another record high this year but the murder count has likely leveled off and is expected to start declining, the University of San Diego said in a report, which also cited an increase in the number of Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States.

“The figures for this year are still quite bad, with more than 10,000 people killed, but not significantly worse than in 2010, when there were at least 20 percent more homicides than in 2009,” David Shirk, director of USD’s Trans-Border Institute, told Efe.

The report was presented Wednesday at a conference in San Diego titled “The Effects of Violence in Mexico on Migration and Immigration Policy.”

Shirk said there had been a sharp slowdown in the “spiral of violence” due to a decrease in homicides in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, which in 2009 accounted for as many as a third of all murders and kidnappings in Mexico, and to new dynamics in cities such as Tijuana.

“Violence in Tijuana peaked in 2008 and 2009. Now presumably, after drug traffickers realized that violence was bad for business, there’s a pact between the Sinaloa cartel and the remnants of the Tijuana (mob), with the former gaining influence, and that’s pushed the violence to the east of the city,” Shirk said.

According to the expert, the “Tijuana model” of not interfering with the traffickers’ operations could be adopted in other Mexican cities, a move that would mean returning to the policy that existed before President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide crackdown on the cartels upon taking office in December 2006.

The strategy has led to headline-grabbing captures of cartel kingpins, but drug war-related violence has claimed nearly 50,000 lives nationwide over the five-year period.

“That would mean all the death and violence has served no purpose, which is an unfortunate and cynical vision and a great tragedy if they’re unable to interrupt the way the cartels conduct their business,” Shirk said.

A total of 10,933 drug-related deaths were registered through Nov. 4, 2011, the expert said, citing figures compiled by the Mexican media. That compares with 15,273 homicides for all of 2010.

Most of these slayings are concentrated in four states while at least 230,000 Mexicans were internally displaced last year as a result of the war on drugs, which also has led to an increase in the number of asylum requests in the United States.

Those asylum seekers, however, have a difficult time winning their cases in part due to political reasons, immigration attorney and conference participant Ginger Jacobs said, noting that in granting their requests the U.S. government would be acknowledging that Mexico cannot protect its own citizens.

According to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, 3,231 Mexicans requested asylum last year but only 49 of those petitions were granted. That amounts to a 1.5 percent success rate, compared to 35.6 percent and 41.6 percent for Chinese and Colombian applicants, respectively.

Shirk said Mexico’s plight is due in part to high drug consumption in the United States and the north-to-south flow of weapons and therefore a change in Washington’s current supply-side oriented anti-drug strategy is essential.

Mexico must transform its justice system to give prosecutors autonomy at the local level, but in the United States marijuana must be legalized because most prosecution and policing expenditures there are focused on that drug even though it represents only between 15-20 percent of cartels’ revenues, he said.

Legalization would free up scarce resources that would be better spent tackling much more profitable drugs like cocaine and heroin, which together with expenditures on witness-protection programs and judicial reforms in Mexico could make a difference, the expert said.

Mazatlán, Sinaloa – In less than 24 hours another woman, who is yet to be identified, was found dead. This time a body was found early in the morning at about 0048 hours on the street José María Morelos in the cummunity of Hogar del Pescador..

This is the second execution of a woman in the area in less than 24 hours.

Next to the body, the killers left a white cardboard with the following message: “THIS IS GOING TO HAPPENED TO ALL THE HALCONES THAT SUPPORT GENTE NUEVA AND WATCH YOUR BACK FEDERAL POLICE AND ELITES CHUY TONO AND POLANCO, YOU ARE ON THE LIST OF ZETAS AND BELTRANES.

Drug Cartels in Mexico have a long history, to stop them we must understand their History! Who they are, where they reside and what they do. By understanding the enemy we can prevail!

The Tijuana Cartel is based in one of the most strategically important border towns in Mexico, and continues to export drugs even after being weakened from a brutal internal war during 2009. Due to infighting, arrests and deaths of some of its top members, the Tijuana Cartel is a shell of what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s when it was considered one of the most potent and violent criminal organizations in Mexico. After the arrest or assassination of its founding members, the Arellano Felix clan, the cartel is now headed by Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the Arellano Felix brothers who once bloodied Mexico and southern California with their brutish and authoritarian style. With the powerful Sinaloa Cartel moving into Tijuana in force, Sanchez Arellano is struggling to keep a grip on this lucrative drug and human trafficking corridor.

Despite its name, the Guadalajara Cartel is from Sinaloa. Its members left their homeland during a military offensive in the late 1970s the region that included mass arrests and a fumigation campaign. Amidst the offensive, police shot and killed Aviles but a young, upstart Sinaloan named Joaquin Guzman Loera quickly took his place. After working for years with Felix Gallardo, Guzman would form the Sinaloa Cartel. The other members of the group were grooming their own replacements: Fonseca’s nephews were Amado and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes who would later create the Juarez Cartel; Felix Gallardo’s nephews were Benjamín, Ramon, Rafael, Javier, Eduardo (their brothers Luis Fernando and Carlos reportedly did not participate), the core of the future Tijuana Cartel. Meanwhile, the military campaign failed: marijuana and poppy production remained prominent in the area, as well as the neighboring states of Durango and Chihuahua. To be sure, the tri-state region, or so-called “Golden Triangle,” has long represented the power base of the Sinaloans in the drug trade.

After shifting operations to Guadalajara, the group began working closely with the Colombian traffickers who were starting to move cocaine in large quantities through the isthmus. Guadalajara’s stature rose, as did law enforcement efforts to dismantle it. In the early 1980s, a veteran Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent named Enrique Camarena began gathering evidence to prosecute the cartel members. Shortly after Camarena had helped Mexican authorities destroy a large marijuana field, cartel operatives kidnapped and killed him. The US began a massive manhunt and pressured Mexico to do the same. Caro Quintero was arrested in April 1985 in Costa Rica. Felix Gallardo remained at large for years but was arrested in April 1989.

From jail, Felix Gallardo called a meeting in Acapulco and divvied up the territories: Guzman and his partner, Hector Luis Palma Salazar, would get parts of Baja California and Sonora; Rafael Aguilar Guajardo would get from Juarez to Nuevo Laredo (the Carrillo Fuentes brothers would later take over this route); the Arellano Felix brothers would get Tijuana. However, almost from the beginning the Arellano Felix brothers were after more. In 1989, shortly after Felix Gallardo was jailed, Ramon Felix Arellano killed a close associate of Guzman in Sinaloa.

The fight quickly spread. In November 2002, gunmen sprayed bullets into a Puerto Vallarta nightclub where Benjamin and Ramon Arellano Felix had gone. Nine people died; Benjamin and Ramon reportedly escaped through an air duct. In May 1993, the Arellano Felix brother sent gunmen to intercept Guzman at the Guadalajara airport, striking and killing a Mexican Cardinal instead. Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix was arrested by Mexican authorities in 1993. But after Guzman and Palma were arrested, the Arellano Felix clan had no equals. They made a pact with the Caro Quintero clan in Sonora, the Milenio Cartel (the Valencia brothers) in Michoacán, as well as alliances in Colima, Jalisco and Oaxaca that allowed them to dominate the trade from north to south.

After Guzman escaped prison in 2001, a new round of fighting began. In February 2002, Ramon Arellano Felix traveled to Mazatlán to oversee and partake in an attempt on the Sinaloa Cartel’s other force, Ismael Zambada García, alias ‘El Mayo,’ who was eyeing one of the Tijuana Cartel’s prized ‘plazas,’ Mexicali. Zambada, however, got the jump, and his men assassinated Ramon. A month later, Mexican authorities arrested Benjamín. The organization readjusted again. Benjamín made an alliance with the Gulf Cartel’s Osiel Cárdenas Guillén in jail and eyed their common enemy: Guzman.

But numerous arrests in the United States and the extradition of other members to the United States to face charges shifted the balance in favor of the increasingly active US law enforcement agents on both sides of the border. Mexican authorities captured Francisco Javier in 2006, and Eduardo in 2008. After Eduardo’s arrest, the group split. Fernando Sanchez Arellano, alias ‘El Ingeniero,’ headed up one faction. Sanchez Arellano is the nephew of the former bosses of the cartel. Eduardo Teodoro García Simental, alias ‘El Teo’ or ‘Tres Letras,’ headed up another faction. García Simental sought an alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel. Sanchez Arellano reportedly allied himself with the Zetas. A bloody feud ensued, but following the arrest of García Simental in January 2010, the organization appears to have consolidated again around Sanchez Arellano.

Modus Operandi

An indictment in the San Diego District Court unsealed in July 2010 painted a picture of a sophisticated organization very much in business, with contacts in the Mexican police and government, including control over the liaison between the Baja California Attorney General’s Office and the US government. It also says the group’s extortion and kidnapping rackets are flourishing under the watch of the new boss. The “Enterprise,” as US authorities called it in the indictment, has a multi-layered organization that insulates its leadership from legal prosecution. Evidence of this is in the US indictment itself: While the US call it the Sanchez Arellano Organization, Fernando Sanchez Arellano is not indicted. Sanchez Arellano’s mother, Enedina, runs the money side of the business. Two of his uncles remain free but are not wanted by Mexican or US authorities